Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Silvia Senna

DRUG CRISIS

Kamloops mother calling on the Province to take strong action to reduce the toxic drug supply

Aug 30, 2023 | 4:02 PM

KAMLOOPS — Another 13 people in Kamloops lost their lives in July due to the toxic drug supply. Advocates believe more needs to be done by the Province so preventable deaths stop growing.

Troylana Manson is an advocate with Moms Stop The Harm. She does it so other families don’t have to go through the same pain that she and her family did. “I advocate in the name of my son Aaron, because he struggled with substances, but he also struggled with some mental health stuff,” she said. “It’s so preventable. So I use my voice because he had a hard time using his voice.”

Bob Hughes, Chief Executive Officer at Ask Wellness, believes the solution involves four major components – prevention, harm reduction, treatment recovery and enforcement. “We need a four-pilar model, we need to maintain harm reduction, but we can’t just run with that one pilar,” he explained. “We need to have prevention campaigns to be able to target those that are at risk of falling into addictions and falling into the use of opioids and homelessness.”

Harm reduction is the one pilar Manson believes should be given more attention. “In the back of my mind, I’m like ‘if we could only change that supply.’ There’s so many people and so much money going into dealing with the toxic supply, let’s just change the toxic supply and some of these costs will go down,” she argued.

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However, Manson said there is another problem when it comes to the drug crisis – grief and loss. “The sadness and the devastation that these families are feeling, this is an epidemic of grief and loss.”

With the latest fatal figures, B.C. has pushed its year-to-date total to 1,455, putting the province on pace to surpass its deadly record of 2,383 deaths set in 2022.